Yay. I finally took the plunge and decided to take Exam 70-451. This is the MCITP exam for the SQL 2008 Dev track.

Frankly, I had taken my time with this one because I was a bit concerned after taking the 70-450 exam. I saw that exam was more difficult than its MCTS counterpart and fully expected the 70-451 exam to be more difficult. And based on that assumption I wanted to devote some time to study.

So here is what I did to study:

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Well, I did not find the time to study and decided to just get it done. I took the exam cold. And not only was it cold by means of not studying, the building did not feel like it was heated and I walked out, after finishing the test, a popsicle. Add to that the next level of cold – I was up until 2am working. Then we throw in a snafu created by Prometric (happens every time though) and a 20 minute wait to start the test. Things could have been better going into this exam.

Needless to say, experience pays off with this exam. The biggest piece of the exam is based on practice and not so much the semantics of the code. That said, I did have three questions that were impossible to answer. The question description and requirements immediately eliminated all of the answers. Needless to say, I did not like those questions and left ample comment about them.

Otherwise, the exam was successful. I passed missing only 5 questions (by my calc). Now I am off to start down the 2008 BI track followed by the MCM Knowledge Exam.

If you are interested here is an excellent resource to study. Yes, I actually looked at the topics to be tested prior to taking the exam. I felt comfortable in most areas and felt I could handle the exam too.